The ACS Style Guide: Effective Communication of Scientific Information

434 Pages·2006·2.78 MB·English

by  Anne M. Coghill

➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤
The ACS
Style Guide

➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ THIRD EDITION
The ACS
Style Guide
Effective Communication
of Scientific Information
Anne M. Coghill
Lorrin R. Garson
Editors
AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY Washington, DC
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS New York Oxford
2006
Oxford University Press
Oxford New York
Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogotá Buenos Aires Calcutta
Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul
Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai
Nairobi Paris São Paulo Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw
and associated companies in
Berlin Idaban
Copyright © 2006 by the American Chemical Society, Washington, DC
Developed and distributed in partnership by the
American Chemical Society and Oxford University Press
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the American Chemical Society.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The ACS style guide : effective communication of scientific information.—3rd ed. /
Anne M. Coghill [and] Lorrin R. Garson, editors.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8412-3999-9 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Chemical literature—Authorship—Handbooks, manuals, etc. 2. Scientific literature—
Authorship—Handbooks, manuals, etc. 3. English language—Style—Handbooks, manuals,
etc. 4. Authorship—Style manuals.
I. Coghill, Anne M. II. Garson, Lorrin R. III. American Chemical Society
QD8.5.A25 2006
808'.06654—dc22 2006040668
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤
Contents
Foreword. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Madeleine Jacobs
Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ix
Contributors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xiii
Part 1. Scientific Communication
1. Ethics in Scientific Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Gordon G. Hammes
appendix 1-1: Ethical Guidelines to Publication of Chemical Research. . . . . . .11
2. Scientific Papers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3. The Editorial Process. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
appendix 3-1: Proofreaders’ Marks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36
4. Writing Style and Word Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
5. Electronic Submission of Manuscripts Using Web-Based Systems. . . . . . . 59
Sarah C. Blendermann
appendix 5-1: Online Submission at Selected Scientific Publishers
and Research Grant Agencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .65
appendix 5-2: Key Features of Selected Online Submission Systems. . . . . . . . .68
6. Peer Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Barbara A. Booth
7. Copyright Basics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Karen S. Buehler, C. Arleen Courtney, and Eric S. Slater
v
vi ➤ The ACS Style Guide
8. Markup Languages and the Datument. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Peter Murray-Rust and Henry S. Rzepa
appendix 8-1: The IUPAC International Chemical Identifier, InChI. . . . . . . .101
Stephen R. Heller and Alan D. McNaught
Part 2. Style Guidelines
9. Grammar, Punctuation, and Spelling. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .105
appendix 9-1: Recommended Spelling List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .129
10. Editorial Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .135
appendix 10-1: Computer and Internet Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .163
appendix 10-2: Abbreviations, Acronyms, and Symbols. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .169
11. Numbers, Mathematics, and Units of Measure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .203
appendix 11-1: The International System of Units (SI). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .228
12. Names and Numbers for Chemical Compounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .233
appendix 12-1: End-of-Line Hyphenation of Chemical Names. . . . . . . . . . . .247
appendix 12-2: Representation of Combinatorial Chemistry . . . . . . . . . . . . .250
Derek Maclean
appendix 12-3: CAS Registry Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .253
13. Conventions in Chemistry. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .255
appendix 13-1: Symbols for Commonly Used Physical Quantities . . . . . . . . .277
appendix 13-2: The Crystallographic Information File. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .284
Frank H. Allen
14. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .287
Janet S. Dodd, Leah Solla, and Paula M. Bérard
appendix 14-1: CASSI Abbreviations for the 1000+ Most Commonly
Cited Journals. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .328
appendix 14-2: A Sample CASSI Entry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .340
15. Figures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .343
Betsy Kulamer
16. Tables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .369
Betsy Kulamer
17. Chemical Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .375
Antony Williams
18. Selected Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .385
Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .389
➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤
Foreword
I
fell in love with chemistry when I was 13. I fell in love with
writing at the age of four when I learned to read. Indeed, my
love of writing, and of writing well, was inspired by my love of reading. Perhaps
that is true for all writers.
Fortunately for me, I have been able to combine my love of chemistry with
my love of reading and writing in a long career as a science communicator and
journalist. Most recently, I served for eight and a half years as editor-in-chief
of Chemical & Engineering News, the flagship newsmagazine of the American
Chemical Society. This gave me ample opportunity to read all of the stories in
C&EN every week, not once but twice and sometimes three times; write weekly
editorials and occasionally longer stories; and indulge my love of chemistry
vicariously, as I read the scientific papers we highlighted in C&EN.
But writing is not as easy as reading. Writing and communicating take a great
deal of skill and effort. One of my favorite quotations on the subject of writing
comes from the novelist John Irving, who observed in The World According to
Garp that a writer never reads for fun. It’s true for me. When I read a sentence
that is well crafted or even better, a scientific paper that is full of well-crafted
sentences, I am always trying to figure out how the author managed to express a
complicated idea with such ease and grace.
The goal of The ACS Style Guide is to help authors and editors achieve that
ease and grace in all of their communications. To my mind, there’s no reason
why scientific papers should not be as easy to read as a good novel. That’s a tall
order, I realize, but if you read through this style guide, you will have all the tools
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Copyright 2006 American Chemical Society
viii ➤ The ACS Style Guide
you need to help you achieve that goal. It’s a wonderful reference book that I
keep on my bookshelf and refer to often. I hope you will as well.
Madeleine Jacobs
Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer
American Chemical Society
➤ ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤
Preface
S
ince publication of the second edition of The ACS Style
Guide in 1997, much has changed in the world of scientific
communication—and yet, many things remain the same.
During the past eight years, electronic dissemination of scientific, technical,
and medical (STM) information has come to fruition. In chemistry, both the
American Chemical Society and the Royal Society of Chemistry have made their
scientific journals available on the World Wide Web and have digitized their
respective publications back to the 19th century. Commercial publishers, who
publish most of the world’s chemical information, have likewise made their pub-
lications available on the Web. Publications in other scientific disciplines, engi-
neering, and medicine have also taken this digital pathway. Whereas traditional
journals continue to be printed and used, electronic delivery has greatly expanded
the availability and reading of STM information far beyond what could have ever
been envisioned with paper journals. Most manuscripts are now written with de
facto standard word-processing software and adhere to formats developed for
electronic creation and processing. Most manuscripts are submitted electroni-
cally, principally via the Internet on the Web. Communications among editors,
reviewers, and authors are now largely electronic, as is communication between
editors and production facilities and printers.
Regardless of the mode of information creation and delivery, the necessity for
accurate information communicated in a clear, unambiguous manner, coupled
with the ethical behavior of all participants, remains the same. As Janet Dodd
wrote in the preface to the second edition, “In the midst of all this change, the
comforting thought is that one goal of authors and editors has not changed: to
communicate information in the most understandable and expedient fashion in
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Copyright 2006 American Chemical Society
x ➤ The ACS Style Guide
publications of the highest quality. To accomplish that goal, we need guidelines.
This book is intended to guide and answer questions for authors and editors, to
save them time, and to ensure clarity and consistency.”
Third Edition
The third edition aims to continue such guidance while broadening the scope
of the book to accommodate changes in technology and the homogenization of
international scientific publishing. New topics in the third edition include chap-
ters on
• ethics in scientific communication;
• submitting manuscripts via the Web;
• preparing and submitting publisher-ready figures, tables, and chemical
structures, including information about various software programs to
create artwork;
• formatting manuscript references to electronic resources and informa-
tion on reference-management software; and
• markup languages, in anticipation of the classification and capture of sci-
entific information in yet-to-be-defined structures.
The chapters on peer review, copyright, the editorial process, and writing
style and word choice have been extensively rewritten. Although language cer-
tainly evolves with time, there have not been substantial changes in English dur-
ing the past seven years. The chapters on grammar, punctuation, spelling, and
conventions in chemistry remain largely the same as in the second edition. The
use of typefaces, superscripts and subscripts, Greek letters, special symbols, num-
bers, mathematics, units of measure, and names and numbers for chemical com-
pounds are generally unchanged, although some of the existing rules have been
clarified. Some new rules and examples have been added to reflect new fields in
chemistry, such as combinatorial chemistry and chemical biology. In all chap-
ters, errors have been corrected (and almost certainly new errors inadvertently
introduced!), and some changes have been made to reflect changes in practice,
particularly as related to electronic issues.
Several features have been added to the third edition to improve the readers’
ease of use:
• The contents are reorganized into two sections. The first section, “Scien-
tific Communication”, contains chapters giving readers information on
broad topics such as ethics in scientific communication, writing style and
word usage, and submission of manuscripts using a Web-based system.
The second section, “Style Guidelines”, contains chapters that give specific
rules and examples. For instance, in these chapters readers will find infor-